A Jewish Music Blogger turned to a Sofer, I've set to myself a long term goal: writing my own Sefer Torah. In this Safrut blog you will find revealing articles about this ancient art and you will also keep track of my progress.

Monday, April 19, 2010

My Progress #5: My First Mezuza

Today I finished writing my very first Mezuza, which means that I'm a step closer towards my goal of writing a Sefer Torah. This time the stakes were much higher - unlike in Megilat Esther and Shir Hashirim I had to write the Shem Hashem and I had to write everything "Kesidran", chronologically. And of course, going to the Mikva became part of my daily schedule, as I can only write the Shem after a proper immersion.

I will give this Mezuza to be checked by a very skilled Sofer here in my town and considering that he is a master in finding unexpected problems, I must say I'm afraid of what he will say. But as far as I can see all is ok. Actually, there's one "mistake" which I deliberately didn't correct because of a problem with the Klaf. Like in my Megillat Shir Hashirim, I made a small hole in klaf while trying to fix a letter, and for that reason I didn't manage to correct this mistake. Can you find it?

Like all my other Safrut items, this Mezuza was written in Ktav Beit Yosef. And like all Ashkenazi Jews, I followed the Tur's opinion of how the Parsha Setuma should be. Read more about this topic here.

Great work for a first mezuzah! A couple of thoughts, is there a reason you went beyond the left hand margin on each line? Also, I noticed in the third to the last line in the word b'neikhem, the nun is missing its tagim.

I did some more research about this and I was told that the the threshold is not 9 yudim, but three times "asher". If so, my parshiot are still inside the limit (they're smaller than 3 times asher) and therefore lekatchila.